This song was something that I had been sitting on for a while before even demoing it. I had been jamming on the riffs for a while, but sometimes I get worried when I track something for the first time because if the ideas don't inspire enough other riffs/ideas, then the song usually ends up being an incomplete demo that kinda just sits there for a while. I was going for something playful and fun with the riffs i wrote, and it seemed to be developing a very "video-gamey" sound which I am a fan of, so I ran with that kind of feel for the riffs. I was really happy with the 2 or so minutes that i demoed, but I had no idea where the song should go next, and as a result the song sat there for a little while. When we were writing/demoing songs to rework for the album, this one came up, and I invited Jake and Mark to come over to help me work on it and complete it. Mark wrote some riffs which really jumpstarted the song back to life, and we spent some time on the arrangement making sure it would be just right. Thanks to Jan at our management, we managed to get the legendary Guthrie Govan to agree to a guest solo, and the section near the end of the song seemed perfect for his style. When I heard his solo for the first time over the song, I was so giddy, I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face! All in all, this track ended up being one of my personal favorites from the album, and we decided that with it's quirky violin intro, it could be a really different way to officially start off the album, because we considered Muramasa to really be more of an intro to ramp things up rather than the first actual song. - Misha